Best of Peter Rhodes - November 14

Here's a selection of the best of the Peter Rhodes column taken from the Express & Star for the week ending October 10.

A POLL suggests that one-third of teachers believe creationism should be given the same status as evolution in lessons. Will no-one speak up for the Tooth Fairy?

ABOUT 4,000 school expulsions last year involved "violent attacks" by children aged under five. The easy, headline-grabbing explanation is that kids are out of control, parents are useless, there's too much television and computer games and we are all going to hell in a handcart. A saner answer is that some five-year-olds have always been violent. I suspect I was one of them. But in those days you quickly learned that teachers were capable of far more violence than any five-year-old could muster. They had a dazzling armoury of rulers, slippers and lockable cupboards. We may have been violent at five but by six most of us were cured.

RACE car. Fry pan. Swim pool. A Daily Telegraph reader demands to know what has happened to the -ing ending, and why. Someone should be look into it.

If I may add a line to the famous song from the movie Dumbo (1941) on the sheer impossibility of baby elephants taking to the skies:

"I seen a peanut stand, heard a rubber band

I seen a needle that winked its eye

But I be done seen 'bout ev'rything

When I see a elephant fly

Or for that matter Gordon Brown, architect of more than 100 stealth taxes, actually giving money away."

As we have seen over the past 11 years, every instinct in this man is to claw as much as he can from taxpayers. If Brown genuinely gives away real tax breaks, bringing real money to real people, then watch out for flying elephants.

RESEARCH at Warwick University suggests that people with high blood pressure who get less than 7.5 hours of sleep per night are more likely to suffer heart disease. However, if they sleep for more than eight hours they double their risk of dying from all causes. And if you can read all that and sleep a wink, there is clearly something seriously wrong with you.

OFFICIALS in Guildford are threatening to close down "greasy spoon" roadside snack vans unless they provide a healthy alternative to the traditional burgers and hot dogs. But there is already a healthy alternative. It is offered by every single snack van in the country. You just keep on driving.

A READER writes: "Now that Remembrance Day is over and we are safe from the threat of serious wounding from Poppy collectors' pins, can all the health & safety officials go to Afghanistan and Iraq to warn the troops of the dangers of flying bullets?"

"WE HAVE only just become aware that there are complaints," says a spokesman for the AQA exam board which has included a Gary Glitter song in its GCSE coursework. Where do they find such people? Perhaps on the same planet as the clots who recommended Salman "Satanic Verses" Rushdie for a knighthood and were then surprised that so many Muslims were offended.

AN OLD sailor was clearing out his sea chest when he discovered a long-lost list of comments made by senior naval officers about junior officers. He posted them to me. I had to smile at:

* "Since my last report this officer has reached rock-bottom - and he's still digging."

* "He has the wisdom of youth, and the energy of old age."

WINTER drawers on. As the cold creeps around your nether regions and you thank heavens for those thermal pants, spare a thought for the chaps who make such heat-preserving miracles possible. A sharp-eyed reader came across an account of the 1994 trials in Denmark where a group of male volunteers were issued with a variety of underwear in man-made and natural materials, some wet and some dry. All were then weighed, fitted with electrodes and had six-inch rectal thermometers inserted. They then sat in a cold room and at 10-minute intervals filled in a questionnaire on whether they were shivering, sweating or comfortable. The eye-watering conclusion was that men wearing wet underwear felt colder and less comfortable than men with dry underwear. So there you have it. I like to think these noble volunteers were allowed to keep the underwear for their troubles. And possibly the thermometers, too.

I HAD a road-rage loonie behind me this week, tailgating with all lights flashing, apparently trying to ram his way through my car in order to gain one place in the 70mph queue. How does anyone get so angry for so little reason? By coincidence, an old friend tells me had had some words with a driver who blindly reversed a misty-windowed car out of his drive at terrific speed, almost mowing down some pedestrians. This ended some minutes later with the driver roaring down the road, leaping from his car and advising my pal that the next time he sees him, "you'll be dead meat." Why are there so many bonkers people about? Where does this utterly disproportionate fury come from? Mytheory is that mad-cow disease is steadily creeping into the population but instead of causing dementia it is spreading rage.

AND yet more collective nouns: A glut of fatties. A jam of tarts. An inventory of liars.

* Has this whetted your appetite for more of Peter's gems? Make sure you read his column every day by picking up a copy of the Express & Star.